


...And The Man Clothed In The Moon

by feveredsweetness



Category: Hannibal (TV)
Genre: After the Fall, Francis Dolarhyde - Freeform, M/M, The Red Dragon - Freeform, Wendigo, feverish dreamscapes, lycan, mentions of Molly and Jack
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-01-25
Updated: 2018-01-25
Packaged: 2019-03-09 11:41:29
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,932
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13480749
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/feveredsweetness/pseuds/feveredsweetness
Summary: My contribution to Radiance: A Fannibal Anthology. My baby. Enjoy.





	...And The Man Clothed In The Moon

**Author's Note:**

> Endless, immense thanks to Jamie and Romina for accepting this piece into both the hard copy, and the PDF. I am eternally honored and grateful to have been a part of something so uniquely special. Also thanks to all of my beta readers. You help keep me sane while keeping me lookin' smart. 
> 
> This story, like the character of Will Graham, is a piece of my very being. To anyone who reads this: thank you.

_Shiver, shiver_  
_Far below_  
_The tapestry of skin_

_Splinter, splinter_  
_Far below_  
_Still breaching, needled in_

_Shiver, shiver_  
_Up above_  
_Sunlight, harshly, waning thin_

_Splinter, splinter_  
_Up above_  
_Scraping to get in_

The glare of neon numbers reaches across the marbled wood surface of the motel room bedside table.

_3:03 AM._

Wind fiercely howls outside of Will’s paid-for barren room, and even with eyes half open he can feel the drumming against the walls, sharpened bone tearing along the grooves and wear of what might as well be the fleshy cavern of his heart.

His eyes flutter then scrunch together as the lines surrounding the outer corners of his eyes deepen before repeatedly smoothing back out again: the echo of a pulse.

His focus mimics the nature of his breath as it comes and wanes between furled lips in creaky huffs, saliva squelching at the back of his throat and the crevices of clenched molars.

It’s like all those years ago in his little, safe boat of a home back in Wolftrap, when glaciered towers tumbled into frigid midnight, his body having been plunged and left thrashing in their great and terrible wake.

Throughout his limbs and the tunnel of his throat, Will writhes against the blistering waves that have come to rage through him once more.

His eyes fall back open as a deep and starved gasp sounds off cheaply plastered walls as he shoots upright in bed, rigid as a lightning rod.

Beads of perspiration roll down from the crown of his forehead and the bridge of his nose, dampening the starched sheets gripped between curled, stiffened fingers.

He flexes his hands, stretching them out as his legs swing over the side of the bed, damp toes sticking against the cool mesh of an unremarkable carpet.

_What are you becoming?_

Typically, these elevated nightmarish affairs descend upon him in slumber’s womb, or during a fevered-hallucinative state. Recently, however, they’ve been slinking out into the shadows of the waking world, blurring the edges of reality and its elevated landscapes.

Will rakes an unsteady hand through a thicket of dark curls, before running both hands over the tired and stubbled surface of his face; the pads of his fingers catching slightly on the ridge of the scar gifted to him in Florence.

A strained ghost of a chuckle leaves the hollow of his mouth, as his lips curve up in the smallest of measures, yet overall fails to penetrate the darkness of his gaze.

He abandons the bed−the rumpled spread now soiled with panic-tinged sweat−and staggers to the single person bathroom, switching on the fluorescent light. The soles of his feet stick to the yellowed whites of tile as he reaches the water-stained sink, palms gripping its walls.

The sink’s paired mirror rests above it, fixed against a peeling, spackled panel. His eyes roam over every area of the rundown room the FBI had provided for the coming nights, which he would more or less continue to spend here.

Bitterness bites the buds of his tongue. The muscles of his jaw twitch.

Jack Crawford. Always reeling him back into the maw of madness with guilt and the poor, anemic faces of victims often used as bait.

Only this time, Jack had gotten a hold of Molly, utilizing her to further chum the waters. Will’s empathy hadn’t been able to resist. Its tendrils had wrapped tightly around the Dragon’s work within the click of an instant, chaining him to the killer and his inner workings, where it had then dragged him into the labyrinth of prime suffering; families, mutilated, canvassing the screens of his imagination’s eye. The reflections of their deaths still everywhere as their screams smear the air around him.

Always the prisoner. Always the lure.

Something inside of Will nudges his ribs firmly and persistently until his eyes shift, returning to the reflective glass in front of him.

The man presented back to the empath looks past him, through him, just as a stranger passing by on a bustling street would. Eyes as empty as the barrels of guns boring into the depths of a place they both have tread many times over.

He can feel himself beginning to split.

“Only beginning, Will?” a smooth, accented voice lilts into the shell of his ear.

Will hisses as though the words slice through him, altering his form.

Turning on the gritty faucet, he splashes water onto his face, the chill of it only supplementing the case of the shakes that has been plaguing him since the occurrence of what he can only sum up as a night terror, though of a different, unfamiliar variation.

Will moves away, snatching a towel from the nearby rack and hastily pats his stubbled cheeks dry. He tosses it to the floor, punching off the harsh light on his way out and crosses back into the shadowed confines of the bedroom.

_4:07 AM._

Each of the clock’s digits leer at him as outside, unrest sustains in gusts of wailing moans.

Hannibal had been right. Jack had come knocking. His old life had never once left him, despite how many times he desperately attempted to let it go.

“Did you, Will?”

Will’s brows knit together, the corners of his eyes crinkling as his lips coil in frustration-birthed mistrust.

“Of course I did,” he spits with a turn of his head.

Hannibal stands before him, his dark, ambered gaze piercing into the farthest reaches of Will’s mind−his _soul_.

“I gave you a family, once. Along with a type of peace that you haven’t known since you sent me away. You sought another,” Hannibal says, his jaw subtly tucking inward. His words are clipped as he is almost clinical in how he monitors the boy before him. “Rude, Will.”

A bark of laughter comes from Will’s mouth as he replies, “Guilt trips, Hannibal? Now that’s really the lowest rung. I told you I wasn’t going to look for you. But here you are. Always on the hunt.”

“And you, Will, always denying the very fabric of who you are,” Hannibal meets.

Taking a step in Hannibal’s direction, the other levels with the older man’s line of vision. His body’s language shifts; more predatory than human as his shoulders rise, his spine straightening. As he does so, Will grants himself the appearance of being bigger than others take him for. Less fragile.

“I’ve told you before, Hannibal. I don’t share your appetite.”

“No, dear Will. Yours is far greater than my own.”

Will tilts his head, his jaw working as his teeth present themselves in a jarring snarl. His mind moves in the nature of a clock’s inner cogs, and he feels it, there, again. That primal nudge within. The seductive whisper of a siren whose call no one else ever heard.

A snake ‘round Hannibal’s feet slithers by, closing in.

Will bristles as his eyes resist flitting in its direction.

_It’s a game. Your mind is playing a game._

Metallic laced breath coats his tongue, sticking to the roof of his mouth as rigidity takes over, pinpricks of perspiration tickling the nape of his neck.

_It’s the price of imagination._

“As much as I fed you,” Hannibal broaches, gliding forward inch by inch, “whispered through the chrysalis, I never could entirely predict you. What has hatched through has ultimately always been beyond my control. You follow your own nature, even when you smother its flame.”

Copper irises glimmer in the throes of hungered excitement. Hannibal’s upper lip curls over his teeth in a daring smile, stopping suddenly as though stalking in vast and feral underbrush.

Will goes still, the man’s smile digging into him like thorns hooking into each rib, waiting to break open his bone wrought cage, and tear away the flesh and bone in order to expose what harbors inside, amidst the trails of blood and sinew.

He feels it move. His muscles tense as the room shifts around himself and Hannibal.

Such stationary shadows abandon their posts on the motel walls, the wind outside breaking in without as much as a shard of glass to trace back to reality.

_But this is reality._

Will’s eyes shrink with incertitude, his gaze still trained on Hannibal who is all but now cloaked in the mistful shades, alive and omniscient. 

“It’s dark on the other side, and madness is waiting.” Hannibal’s voice travels, flooding into Will’s ears as swiftly as the rush of blood pumping through his veins.

The external darkness swells, and expands as it builds in height until Will lies canopied beneath its presence.

Will’s pupils widen until the enraged sea around them is barely detectable. Wind chapped lips part to reveal a crest of teeth as his feet anchor to the floor, knowing there is nowhere left now he that can possibly run to.

So he watches, lungs on fire within a seizing chest as the all enshrouding, coal-black mist crashes down upon his being, swallowing him whole.

Whether time lapses or exists in suspension is beyond the mind of Will Graham as he awakens, instinctively fighting his way out of whatever encases him. It isn’t any longer the silken walls of the ink-kissed matter from before.

_No._

Wet. Viscous. Oppressive in its sheathing of him.

His pulmonary muscles still scorching.

Will tries to gasp–to scream–but whatever vocalisations he attempts, fall upon his own deaf ears as wasted oxygen humidly suffocates his face.

His vision is blurry at best, though he can see enough to trust in the fluid-like figure tracking past him, outside of his imprisonment.

No. Not past him. Drawing nearer.

Recognition eases the strain of his heart, the pauses between beats elongating as he shuts his eyes and tries to listen.

Synchronicity between himself and the creature outside forms, as though some divine thread wove them together into the same tapestry; Fate having separated only to reunite them.

A guide. Identically different to the other. Always calling out into the wilderness of his soul.

_Thud._

_Thud._

_Thud._

Will sharply exhales through his nose as adrenaline screams throughout his veins, further building up the scream perched under his chin.

The tip of an antler punctures the wall of his captivity; a burst of air teases Will’s lungs, replenishing his determination to survive.

Retracting his digits, shaping them into claws, he hooks a few of his fingers through the recently made hole, tearing the rest of the material away until, finally, with a shattering bellow, he breaks himself free.

He crawls the remainder of his way from out of what he can now tell is a type of placenta.

He drinks in the crisp air, gasping intensely, as though deprivation may hit once more at any given moment.

The man slumps into the cool, dampened grass beneath him, allowing his face to fall and rest against the green as he blinks, relieved. His body, while limp, is slathered in slick, tacky afterbirth which clings to every surface of pale, toned flesh that appears, glistening and translucent under the pregnant moon that hangs high above, draped in threads of silver cloud.

One of his calloused hands paws at his cheek, his trimmed nails somehow sharper as they make an attempt at cutting through and tearing away that in which so desperately clings to him.

Hooves sound behind him, like drums of the fruitful Earth.

Coldness nudges the back of his skull as dampened breath soothes Will’s spirit.

Will knows.

He stirs, grasping a fistful of grass for leverage as he pushes himself up, releasing weight from where he earlier placed it on his side. His hips shift in order to allow for his legs to bend and rise from the ground.

Once partly up, the Ravenstag bows, offering its neck for the man to take hold of and sling himself over as splayed fingers hold gently onto the ebony, blue-hued plumes and the coarse yet velvet fur in between.

The destined pair ride deeper into the heart of the evening, amongst the far-off, distant cries composing nighttime’s symphony that seem to cause a strange yet not unfamiliar sensation within Will that he can only describe as scraping. His blood buzzing within the tunnels of his ears. His heart practically singing a song that is familiar and foreign all the same.  
Colors around him turn richer in their monochrome shades, the expanse of severe fields give way to a border of oak and tangles of various brush harboring nature’s unruly children.

 _Somewhere_ , Will thinks, _is the place I’m meant to be shown._

Times floats by. Nightfall only advances.

His body grows heavy while alertness holds unforgivingly on his senses, keeping him in the arms of lucidity.

Eventually, the Ravenstag brings him to the side of a riverbank, halting to bow again as it lowers itself to its knees. The creature that has been cognizant of the empath long prior to him ever reaching conscious shores, huffs out into the black of the evening, misting the invigorating air.

With a rustle of its feathered fur coat and a roll of its shoulders, Will receives the unspoken signal to depart from his host of passage.

The man hoists one of his legs back over the Ravenstag’s side and pushes himself off with a grunt as he lands on his feet.

He caresses the creature’s cheek, its eyes of no discernable color yet alluring all the same as it breathes softly against his palm, watching Will walk past, on into the outwardly motionless river ahead.

The water laps against Will’s legs as he wades further in. He stops when the water is up to around his waist, cupping his palms to entrap the fluid there, scrutinizing its tonal shift from coal to silver to coal again.

His heart slows as he closes his eyes in allowance to drift deeper until submersion occurs, rumbling in the hollowed drums of his ears.

“Darkness makes you sacred, Will,” The river feeds seductively, and oh, does he drink in the velvet, triumphant pain of it all until his heart and lungs swell to their capacity; the afterbirth relinquishing him.

He breaks back up through the midnight surface, hailed by strewn starlight and the charged glow of the moon, patches of cloud still clothing it as though out of worship.

Will’s gaze roams in search of the watchful guide who brought him here, narrowing when the animal is nowhere to be seen.

Gone. Evaporated like the walls of dreams in the harsh morning light. The waking light.

_You don’t belong in the light. You were born of the twilight where there can never be one without the other._

The truth of this does not weigh on Will as it would have in his earlier years, in chains of self-condemnation. Back where he fought day in and day out to suppress the urges that have called to him for so long, choking them back like bile that only tore up the back of his esophagus in anger-fueled acidity. Begging to come out all the while. Protesting with every night terror and morbid hallucination.

No.

Rather, the truth from Hannibal poses more of an influence. Then again, Hannibal always has.

“God only knows where I’d be without him,” he rattles out between simpering lips.

“And yet you still deny,” Hannibal counters, ambered eyes void of any human emotion. Shark like.

Will snaps around, his vision taking a moment to settle on the man before him.

A howl of wind pierces the air, moving right through him as the scenery abruptly alters. His feet no longer touching anything solid.

Shadow devouring him over. Insidious.

“Tell me, dear Will,” Hannibal croons, “when will you indulge in your darker calling and nourish what lies inside of you? How many more times will you attempt to save yourself?”

The earth reshapes itself before the empath’s mind can even process the transition from riverbank to a high up cliff, eroded by the ferocity of the frigid Atlantic down below. Everything bathed in the fullness of the moon, its swollen belly beckoning him; the song with no name rising to its crescendo in each and every blood vessel mapped throughout his body.

He can feel it all, rushing in and through him. Undergoing change charged by breath and light, mixed in with the sweet pain of darkness that is all he has ever known.

And blood.

Streaks of iron. Trails of flesh and ropes of entrails. A torn out throat.

Heat pools in his abdomen now, his own blood thrumming like thunder on the sun-kissed horizon as it sets, unveiling the carnal desires of the night as his teeth set on edge behind hungered lips.

A great Red Dragon stands up ahead. Hannibal attacking from behind with all the prowess of a lion that Will knows has always preyed in the corners of every room he’s ever frequented; every crime scene he has ever stepped upon and analysed.

He himself observes, crouching and armed with the handle of a knife nestled tightly in his hand.

His jaw is dripping. Dark splotches marking the stony, weathered ground. His clothes stained with crimson that no wind can ever dry, for the stain rests in the fabric of his soul.

His hunger rises. Greater than any before.

As Hannibal’s arms crush upon the Dragon’s larynx, his legs wrapping around and digging into the middle of the beast’s body, Will seizes his opportunity to stealthily close in from the side.

Will breaks into a sprint, lunging forth as the Dragon with its wings outstretched, violently flapping, struggles to throw Hannibal off its back. Its powerful arms unsuccessful in ridding its trachea of the pressure in which it suffers under. The Dragon’s fiery eyes bulge even as they narrow in further animosity.

Will plunges his knife into the Dragon’s exposed stomach, tearing flesh from bone as he continues to bring the blade from the intestines, up into its chest before ripping the blade out and driving it back in again, only this time delving deep into the cardiac muscle.

Great gouts of blood sprays across Will’s moonlit face, his hands bathed in the substance of life now seeping thickly from the Dragon’s carcass.

Hannibal goes down with the great, mythical predator, his teeth snared in the side of its face, removing a chunk as he brings his head away in one vicious, feral turn.

Heavily exhaling through his mouth, the lids of Will’s eyes grow heavy. His back arches, his neck baring itself to the praise of the moon. Another howl breaks through the atmosphere, rupturing through his chest as the sound triumphantly leaps from out his throat.

The splintering of bone reverberates around them as Will’s hands mould into crushing claws, fur dark as the most precious oil lining his fingers, his ribs as they rise and shift up, splaying, continuing on to his spine as muscle becomes more developed, rippling through his limbs. His ears turn to points, better suited for catching all and any whisper of a hunt sure to surface and present itself.

A gift, even.

He hears the crackling of his jaw as it extends, his nose moving accordingly, outward and flattened. The scent of iron intermingled with the tang of copper causing him to salivate, his mouth now overwatering. He runs his sharpened tongue over his lower lip, feeling the newly formed ridges and spears of his teeth in the process of doing so.

“This is all I ever wanted for you, Will. For both of us.”

Hannibal’s words laces the pair together as primordial eyes of Prussian blue flecked with golden embers travel to meet those of ivory, unseeing yet consuming all the same.

A snarl echoes from out of Will’s bloodied muzzle as he acknowledges the antlered, skeletal figure; its mouth akin to an open wound as it grins. The wendigo brings one of its hands to its face to lick the gore from its talons, savoring each viscid drop underneath the swollen moon, in the company of their recent kill. Their victory.

Will’s lips curve over his fangs as he prowls back over to the winged beast behind the wendigo, his gaze latching onto the intact and exposed esophagus. With a flash of teeth, he tears into the corpse’s skin, hauling away tendons, muscle, and vocal cords in a glorious arterial curtain of life’s very essence as the rest of the fluid spills down his throat, quenching an innate thirst.

But the drink does not satiate entirely.

The wet, squelching noise of talons severing organ from tissue attracts the Lycan’s attention, drawing him close to the Wendigo’s side as the cadaverous figure faces Will in his evolved form, holding in its hand the heart of the slain dragon. Still thumping though removed from its chosen host.

Will’s own heart throbs in heavy, quick succession, like the pursuing, determined footfall of hunters past.

He locks eyes with Hannibal, both completely in their honest forms. The other permissively nods, extending their inhuman palm in sacred offering.

Will lowers his head in acceptance, the blades of his teeth carving into the muscular organ without hesitation.

The Wendigo watches, entirely rapt as carnality runs rampant throughout their counterpart. Shreds of meat devoured from their very hand until nothing but the sheen of liquid is left. The footprint of savagery.

It is during these moments of passionate distraction that astonishment falls over Hannibal’s authentic, angular face. His eyes, white as bone, somehow grow more unsettling as they open up to the midnight sky overhead, his mouth agape in agonized, lustful silence.

Hannibal’s own beating heart is in the wrathful grasp of the Lycan’s hand.

Rancor transforms into enamored tranquility, however, as Will leans in to claim the mouth of the one who can ravage and ingest him whole; the mouth of the monster that can be as cruel as he is forgiving, and as manipulative as he is understanding.

Their lips work together, fitting together seamlessly as their tongues explore the textured caverns of their mouths while hands seek purchase in wild curls of hair and the dampness of shirts.

Neither of them knows when their finer selves reverted back into their human states. Neither of them is particularly caring of the occurrence. Their concerns lay elsewhere as the kiss breaks and they part only by inches; their faces still hovering in proximity as their sweat slickened foreheads rest together.

Will’s stare lingers then drifts to the opened palm of his upturned hand resting at his side. Hannibal gently cradles the back of it, bringing it up higher into the given light.

Still glistening.

Hannibal sighs contentedly as his eyes flutter to a close for a moment, as if in remembrance of the claiming of his heart.

“It really does look black in the moonlight.” Will whispers, exhilaration interlaced with the peace he’s long since missed glazing over his features, glimmering in the corners of oceanic eyes.

He falls against Hannibal’s soaked chest, his arms embracing him, holding him close. The smell of death and the salt of the sea passing through his nose. The baying of the wolves resounding all around them in the ebony stretches of star strewn night. The moon ever watchful.

A clap of thunder shakes the room of Will’s fevered slumber. His eyes, disrupted from their R.E.M. cycle, press together before blinking open, his brows knitting as he becomes aware of the time.

_6:07 AM._

The drumming against the walls amidst the cries of wind persists. The dark world of madness still waiting.

He breathes deeply, closing his eyes.

_Soon._


End file.
